Slawbug

Dominate has a base effect of 1-3 and an effect per level of 1-3 (from the scripts). How that translates to chance to hit and duration, I couldn't tell you. You might be able to figure it out by making lots of comparisons with other spells, such as Daze (1-2 and 1-2, a good measuring rod for spell success as it's pretty consistent and we know it is based directly on enemy level) or War Blessing (1-2 and 1-1, so a good measuring rod for duration). Good luck, though.

(Cautionary note: the title is a bit of an exaggeration. Vlish are severely overpowered and certain small but influential aspects of shaping are absurdly unbalanced.)

I don't think I've played a Shaper on Torment before, not since G1, anyway. I rarely play Shapers. Well, this game, I have periodically been checking the preferences to make sure the difficulty is actually set to Torment. It hasn't seemed like it. Nothing can touch me. It's ridiculous.

1. Some background:

I was trying to figure out which creations were really the most valuable, so I did a little testing, and looked through the creature definitions file. With the exception of the fourth-tier creations, who have a plethora of unique skills but aren't available until very late in the game anyway, there are very few things differentiating any of the creations. The most important ones are:

- Essence cost (which also affects cost to pump stats)

- Base level

- Type of attack

- Attack skill

There are a few others:

- Base HP and Energy

- Small bonuses to stats

- Resistances

But differences among them are mostly insignificant, so I'll mostly ignore them.

Type of attack is obviously important, as creations that don't have ranged attacks can't be employed the same way as ones that do, and some of the ancillary effects (slowing and stunning) are quite useful.

Level is by far the most important characteristic, however. A creation's four primary stats are equal to half its level (rounded down). Level and Endurance are responsible for the bulk of HP, and Strength + Attack Bonus is responsible for how strong ALL creation attacks are (yes, including missile attacks). Attack bonuses are generally smaller than base levels, and HP bonuses are almost all puny in comparison to even mid-level creation HP, so level is really what makes or breaks a creation.

If you look at the creation stats with this in mind, they actually seem fairly balanced. The more expensive, higher tier creations have higher base levels. There are two problems with this, though.

1) Bonus to base levels. When you shape a creation, it gets a bonus of +1 for each point in Create X you have, and +1 for each point in the appropriate Shaping skill (+1 per 2 points above 10 and +1 per 3 points above 20). It's trivial for a Shaper to reach 10 in any Shaping skill, so you can basically add a flat +11 or +12 to each base level right away.

2) Levelling up. As frequently discussed on this board, having 7 creations follow you reduces your own XP by nearly 50%, but by the end of the game you will only be down a handful of levels over this, perhaps 4-6. Creations get almost exactly 75% the experience that you do, regardless of the creation's own level, and the level of your creations doesn't affect how much XP you get. So if a creation follows you around for 20 level ups, you can expect it to gain 15 levels. Not insignificant!

Point #2 becomes horrifically relevant when you realize that some creations (generally, the weaker ones) are available before others are. Yes, you could theoretically find a way to run to Dhonal's Keep at level 1 and get Drayks right away, but aside from the fact that you wouldn't have enough essence to make one, that takes the fun out of the game, for me anyway.

Here's a table of this basic information about the first three tiers of creations. I've left off the fourth tier since they would be poorly represented on this chart, and I've left off Cryodrayks since they don't become available until fourth tier creations do. I separated them out based on when they become available to you -- almost immediately, soon after reaching Harmony Isle, and soon after reaching Dhonal's Isle. I also clumped the creatures with no missile attack together.

(Note that this table uses actual base levels, which are 75% rounded down of the base levels listed in the definitions file. Also, for the creations like Battle Alphas that get tiny Strength bonuses, I just lumped those in with melee and missile skill.)

           BASE    MELEE    MISS    MISS    MISS    MISS
CREATION    COST    LV    SKILL    SKILL    MULT    TOHIT    TYPE
Thahd        8    3    3
Fyora        8    1    2    2    1-3    60%    Fire
Artila        12    3    2    4    1-4    70%    Magic/Acid

Pyroroamer    12    3    3 Exp
Clawbug        20    7    4
Thahd Sh.    28    12    2
Plated B.    48    12    0 AP
Roamer        15    7    2    2     1-4    70%    Magic/Acid
S. Artila    30    13    0    0    1-4    70%    Magic/Acid
Cryoa        30    6    2    2    1-5    80%    Ice
Vlish        15    9    4 Poi     3    1-5    70%    Magic/Slow
Terror Vlish    45    15    2 Poi    1    1-5    70%    Poison/Poison

B. Alpha    40    15    9
Glaahk        60    15    10 Stn
Drayk        50    18    8     2    1-6    75%    Fire

B. Beta        60    19    9
Ur-Glaahk    100    22    10 Stn

The following table presents the creations as they would be if you put 10 points in the appropriate shaping skill, buy 2 levels of Create X, create them as soon as you have the ability, and keep them with you. I adjusted these where necessary -- you can only get 1 point in Drayk right away, from a canister, whereas Terror Vlishes require using at least 1 canister to get to 3, the value I used for them, and so on. This means that several of the creations, such as Vlish, could actually be created a level higher with canister use.

For a point of comparison I've chosen level 25, which when gaining levels slowly allows time to potentially get even the Beta and Ur-Glaahk. There are a variety of creation strength-boosting effects available:

+2 Transference Robe

+2 Sharing Belt

+2 Guardian Claymore

+3 Crystalline Shroud

+4 War Blessing

Since any player will have at least some of these, I'll be conservative and pick the two biggest no-brainers (Claymore + Shroud) to give each creation a bonus of 5 to Strength, and no Endurance bonus. Basically, the effect of wearing more is just to make the creations with better damage multipliers (like Drayks) better, and to make to-hit rates even less relevant.

I averaged out the typical damage assuming no resistance. I didn't include base damage because it's small and I'm not sure if it applies to creation attacks. (i.e. the Fyora's attack, Firebolt, has a multiplier of 1-3 per level but may have base damage of 1-4 as well.) HP calculations do include bonus HP.

I still haven't included the cost of 2 points of Int in the base cost, since it may be useful to skip those at first in order to create more creatures when you are at a lower level despite having lower essence.

LV GOT						MELEE	MISS
/MADE	CREATION	COST	LV	HP	DMG	DMG	EFFECTS
10/16	Pyroroamer	12	27	182	52		Explodes
2/12	Thahd		8	29	270	55
10/19	Clawbug		20	30	268	60
10/25	Thahd Sh.	28	36	393	62
10/20	Plated B.	48	31	250	50		+2 AP
16/27	B. Alpha	40	33	332	75
22/32	B. Beta		60	34	358	77
16/27	Glaahk		60	33	312	77		Stun
22/35	Ur-Glaahk	100	37	382	82		Stun

1/ 8	Fyora		8	26	201	50	40
4/14	Artila		12	29	220	52	57	Acid
10/19	Roamer		15	30	258	55	55	Acid
10/26	S. Artila	30	37	352	57	57	Acid
10/19	Cryoa		30	30	258	55	66
10/21	Vlish		15	32	289	62	72	Slow/Pois
10/28	Terror Vlish	45	39	381	65	75	Pois/Pois
16/29	Drayk		50	35	366	75	84

Several things should be apparent from this chart. The first is that levelling up creations is really powerful.

The second is that Battle Shaping sucks, a lot. In exchange for a not very useful advantage in HP, battle creations have weaker attacks than magic creations, especially when you consider how common physical resistance is.

The third is that Vlish are really overpowered. Their slowing effect would already make up for the few points of additional damage a Drayk gets, if it weren't for the fact that Vlish cost 15 and Drayks cost 50! There are a handful of enemies with high resistance to energy attacks -- good thing the Vlish has a physical attack that's as strong as any other creation's, considering it also causes poison damage. Oh, and speaking of resistance, the Vlish gets built in resistance to several types of attacks, more than any other creation in the first three tiers.

The cheap cost of Vlish means, furthermore, that you can more easily afford to pump their stats or support them with spells. And if you pump stats, wear more boosting equipment, or gain more levels, the advantage their 1-5 missile attack has over the majority of creations that are stuck with 1-4 attacks just increases.

And let me reiterate that the slowing effect is really powerful.

2. Torment, really?

The other thing that should be apparent is that by levelling up creations, you can make powerhouses without using up too much essence. One level 32 Vlish might be weaker than a level 30 solo Agent or Guardian, but seven of them? Supported by Mass Energize? That's about where I am now, and even on Torment, the game has become a joke.

I almost never buff, because even without it, I can take out several enemies per round. Buffing meant, for example, that Spharon's HP got reduced to nothing in two rounds, despite his having high resistance to energy attacks. The shard kept him alive longer, but being hit with slow fourteen times per round meant that he never got to attack at all.

I don't think I can say anymore that G3 is the Agent's game. I haven't spent any skill points the past couple of levels because there's nowhere to put them that will actually make a difference. I suppose I can put a bunch in Intelligence later if I want to shape some Gazers.

I know, I know. Geneforge is all about Shapers. They are supposed to be powerful. But this much power is ridiculous, particularly from a 15 cost creation.

Levelling up is only part of that, though. Going around Greenwood with level 14 Artilas was pretty easy, too. My balancing suggestions would be:

- Reduce the base level bonus from shaping skills slightly, or just make the skills more expensive

- Make the XP your creations gain depend on the number of creations you have. Levelling one creation up this much is a nice option, I think, but levelling seven up is too powerful.

- Fix the Vlish's attacks so that they are weaker than average as in G1.

- Do something to make battle creations worthwhile.

You hit the nail on the head.

Bonuses start to plateau at 10. Up to 10, your creations get 1 bonus level per point. Between 10 and 20, they get 1 level per 2 points. After 20, they get 1 level per 3 points.

6 skill points for a level is still quite reasonable if you're a shaper. 12 is much less reasonable; at that point you'll probably get more in both the short and the long run out of some Intelligence.

Because clearly, investing in Strength makes you better able to take hits.

I liked you better when you just ranted about minotaurs.

Unfortunately, no. In Torment, enemies hit for a lot of damage. Until you have heavy armor, good Parry skill, and spell buffs like Augmentation and Essence Armor, it's pretty hard to survive more than one hit. So any time there are multiple enemies attacking me -- which, for an Agent with no creations who can't pump Mental Magic enough to use Daze effectively, is going to be all the time -- there is a decent chance that I will randomly get hit twice in a row and die without being able to do anything about it. That's way too much save-and-reload for my taste.

This is compounded by the fact that the limited supply of good missile ammo means that most things will survive (and attack me) for multiple turns.

The other thing is that I'm not even at visible 1% against all the enemies I meet. This may get better over time, like when I find the +3 luck boots... but it already costs a boatload to increase the relevant skills. I get about 3 or 4% increase in dodge capability per level up, and it's dropping. I'm at visible 40% against Brutal Thahds, for example, and they kill me in one hit. That's just not good enough.

Chibi, I'm sure your contributions would be welcome. You aren't presumptuous about your conclusions and you don't start fights. A lot of people do

Perhaps a better phrase than "any strategy will work in Normal" is "any strategy CAN work in Normal." A useful distinction can be made between strategy, and tactics. Tactics cover some details of gameplay that apply regardless of strategy, like positioning your characters well in battle, deciding what enemies to attack with which characters, what wepaon to use, what spell to cast, and so on. There is a lot of room for play style differences even within a given strategy, or a given build.

About dying on Normal: well, what kind of situations are you in that cause you to die? What do you do differently that causes you to not die? Asking yourself questions like that is the best way to learn. The game is frequently harder at the beginning. (This is characteristic of Jeff's games, because he packs them full of optional quests and goodies, but wants players who ignore most of them to be able to finish the game.)

Yeah, I've noticed that too.

The thing that threw me is that the numbers seem to be accurate in A4. I guess the engines aren't quite as similar as they seem, after all.

Well, I used cheat codes to run the same test with an extra 4 points of Dexterity, and I got hit 5 times out of 100, which doesn't make any sense. I used cheat codes to add another 2 points of Dex and I again got hit 5 times out of 100.

I don't know what exactly is going on, but I have to conclude that dodging is too unreliable to be a worthwhile defense.

I tested physical attacks only. Missiles can actually reach 0% hit rate onscreen, and the few times I've seen that happen this game (against weak Artilla) I never once saw a hit.

Ice Bolt doesn't get any kind of special bonus to hit. It has a base hit chance of 80%, compared to 70% for Searer, 60% for Firebolt and for melee attacks. However, those numbers are all taken into account when the game displays hit rates -- I'm sure of that.

Edit for clarity: the point is, the number displayed onscreen takes into account both attack bonus and dodge bonus. It goes down if you increase Dexterity, and it goes up if you face an enemy with a better attack.

GAH!

I just tried testing it empirically, to be sure. My dodging Agent was hit 11 out of 100 times by Icy Crawlers, despite the engine claiming their hit rate was 1%.

This is consistent with what I've observed in general.

Unless anyone knows why this happens, and it has to do with something specific (e.g., Essence Shield) and not just a general limitation on dodge effectiveness in melee, I think we can officially lay the dodging Agent to rest. Sigh.

The Thahd description does say they have a "sad tendency" to get confused...

That's not good engine abuse, though. I mean talk about a waste of 11 essence.

Engine abuse would be playing monkey in the middle with two ranged attacks. Fyora A shoots Rhotghroth, it goes to Fyora A. Fyora B 6 squares away shoots it, it goes to Fyora B. Repeat.

I seem to recall DeVlish posting that the AI generally attacks the last thing that attacked it. So as long as the Thahds move after you do, then yes.

"MagmaDrakoon" makes me think of the good old Magic Batboon:

I'm not convinced. Missiles and Dex are as expensive for a Guardian (2, 4) as Magic and Spellcraft are for a Shaper. You don't have to specialize at all among battle/mental/blessing items, it's true, and you get better weapons skills; but your creations are also weaker.

Also, I don't think Dex and Missiles increase the effects of pods, spores, and rods. I could be wrong, but I haven't noticed it, anyway.

I think I am actually coming around to SoT's disposable creations model. At least that way you get flexibility.

...you know, what with the three of us rambling on like this, and our differing opinions as to what strategies are the best ones, it occurs to me that we mirror in some ways the Shaper/Guardian/Agent trichotomy...

"ipothetical" makes him sound British. Which is very amusing.

Reapers do physical damage, just like regular batons. I guess it's just that their multiplier is so high (1-12) that they do respectable damage even against a 40% resistant enemy.

Neh. I guess things will improve once Venom Thorns become less of a rarity.

Shaping was hideously powerful in G1, about twice as powerful as in subsequent games, while magic was much weaker, both in terms of damage output and in terms of what spells actually existed. Magic wasn't king in G1.

This build is starting to disappoint me. For one thing, attacks that the engine claims have a 1% chance of hitting me are definitely hitting me more than 1 in 100 times. They almost always miss, but they hit often enough that I can't assume they will miss. If that continues to be the case, it pretty much destroys the entire premise of the build, and I'm gonna have to abandon it.

More importantly, I figured out the problem with missiles, and the reason that Icy Crystals are amazing while batons are not: javelins and batons all do physical damage.

I never paid much attention to physical resists (i.e., armor) on enemies before, because it's common and usually low. But it really is VERY common, and when you don't have Quick Action to double up your damage, it becomes quite noticeable. Specifically, I became irate when I noticed that Firebolt was doing more damage than Javelins were, despite having Dex+MiW of 13 and Battle+Spellcraft of 3, and despite Javelins having a higher multiplier than Firebolt.

But look at the list of things with physical resistance:

15% Servile

20% Roamer

25% Spawner, Turret

30% Servile, Thahd, Vlish, Specter, Glaahk, Spinecore

40% Clawbug, Fighter, Battle Alpha, Drayk, Drakon

50% Servant Mind, Golem, Rotghroth

60% Pylon

Basically, everything not named Fyora or Artila has built in armor.

Sure, there are things that resist fire or ice or energy; but (especially for energy) there are less. A spell-slinging Agent can just change to a different spell. A Shaper can either employ multiple creation types, can switch to physical instead of breath attacks, or can use items and spells as supplements. A character who relies on melee or missile weapons doesn't have those options so much.

Icy Crystals are wonderful, as are wands, but there aren't enough to use them as regular attacks.

THIS is why melee got so much worse in G3, too! -- the dice dropped to 4 AND the resists got ramped up, including physical resists.

GRRRRR!

Ghez/Max: Are you the same person?

*facepalm*

I smell a warning.

If someone gets canned in the Geneforge Series forum, would their title become "CANISTERED"?

Ah, the competition for lack of a life on Sunday mornings

I agree with pretty much your whole edit. I think it would be very nice, and very in-flavor, to give the guardian some kind of leadership capability that enhances the power of his creatures in a way different from the shaper's essence pumping. The problem is that this is inordinately hard to do when you insist, as Jeff does, that every character can potentially use every ability, spell, etc.

Perhaps Parry could become a kind of Bodyguard ability that gives a defensive bonus to creations 1 or 2 square away from the Guardian, in addition to the bonus the PC gets. That would explain the Guardian's name, and it would foster a playing style extremely different from both the Shaper and the Agent.

The funny thing is that shaping skills have already been toned down. Back in G1, freshly made creations received a bonus of +1 to their core stats PER LEVEL, rather than half a point per level as they currently do. If you pushed Fire Shaping high you could easily make a Drayk that started out with 30 in each stat. That was ludicrous.

I think the best way to fix this effect, now, is to re-balance the creations. In G1, Vlish had missile attacks that were slightly weaker than average, and melee attacks that were a complete joke. 15 essence was a reasonable cost. But because their abilities have never been weakened like the regular ones have been, they now fight as well as clawbugs and shoot as well as anything. With more reasonable pricing at, say, 45 essence, I wouldn't be able to abuse them so much. Or with crappier attacks.

Artilla are also pretty strong. Eyebeasts are broken, but that's clearly on purpose. Those are the only ones that really need fixing. Well, Clawbugs and Battle Alphas desperately need to be made stronger, too.

What I would really like to see is that the creations become less generic. Give the artila a penalty to Endurance, instead of just giving it a low HP bonus; that way it has significantly less HP even at high levels, rather than 15 below a Vlish at any level. Give the Battle Alpha a bonus to Endurance. Make the Glaahk's attack roll smaller dice than the Battle Alpha's, as it did in G1. And so on.

Level of creations doesn't affect how much XP you get, or how much XP they get. XP is determined entirely by your PC's level and the number of allies you have, approximately as follows:

# PC Creations0 50 --1 46 362 43 343 40 324 37 295 34 276 31 247 28 22

Terror Vlish, btw, don't apply Terror either. Not anymore. But investing to 10 in Magic Shaping only costs 34 skill points for a Shaper. There's plenty left over to put into Mental + Spellcraft, or Dex + Missiles, as you see fit. I'm not fond of breaking AI scripting, but I am investing heavily in Mental Magic for Daze, so maybe I'll try Terror out.

The special effect of Vlish is not stunning, but slowing, and I don't think it's possible to resist slowing in Geneforge. The thing is, there are actually relatively few differences among non-fourth tier creations aside from attack method and base level. If you get Vlish up to high levels, they compare just fine with Drayks and Glaahks; they just have a different special ability. And because they are so cheap, you can actually afford to improve their stats, even with seven of them. A level 36 Vlish, unimproved and with no equipment bonuses, will have about 350 HP. With Group Heal to support them, I don't expect any casualties.

I thought about making a Glaahk or two when I got to Dhonal's Keep, but by that point, my Glaahk would be lower level than my Vlish, with a comparable melee attack; basically I'd trade a slowing missile and a poison melee for just a stunning melee, plus I'd lose essence and they would be harder to essence-pump.

If it isn't apparent, I think that Vlish have become overpowered in G3 -- not broken by any means, just a ridiculously good value. The flexibility their cheapness affords a Shaper makes this, imho, one of the most powerful builds the game has to offer.